Breaking Ties
by Annabel the Scribe
Summary: In which Javert's mother reads his palm, teenage Javert goes all... angsty, and general use is made of the author's one AM creativity streak. Oneshot.


**A/N: My first Les Mis fic. Hooray! I began writing this at quarter to one in the morning, and finished it at twenty to three. Yes, you're right – I don't have a life. I get my main bursts of inspiration when I should be sleeping. I'll post this, then go to bed. Read and Review, my friends!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Les Mis, Javert or anything else associated. Javert and I both have a form of subtle OCD, and that counts for nothing. I just wanted to say it because I thought you'd like to know.**

**Amazing what you can put into disclaimers, isn't it?**

The inside of the caravan was muggy and a small table stood in the centre. On it was a stack of cards – tarot cards to be exact. A chair sat on either side of the table. One was empty – the other contained a woman.

A gyptian woman, clad in the customary clothes of her culture. A skirt flowed from her waist to the floor, long enough that it almost pooled at her feet. The cornflower yellow top she wore was low-cut and baggy, with long sleeves. Her hair was rich black and tied in various places with thick, purple pieces of fabric. She was tall and slim, sitting primly in her place, as if it were one strictly taught to her. Her eyes were fluid and brown – generally downcast out of respect, but aflame with hidden wisdom and the remains of a feisty spark when at the same level as everyone else's'.

She was a fortune teller by trade – the tarot cards, the crystal ball; she could use each, and more, to foretell someone's future.

Or so she claimed, anyway – whether this particular gypsy ever had even a glimmer of divination skill is unknown, and, for the most part, completely irrelevant.

There were a few gentle thuds as someone mounted the steps of the caravan, entering. It was a young man – the son of the gypsy woman in the chair, though it should not be understood from this that he was full gypsy. He was too pale to be gyptian, but probably too dark to pass for a Frenchman. He was a half-blood, admittedly, but living with his mother – his father had deserted long back. His hair was longer than most men's, very straight (though Heaven knows how he kept it that way), and of a deep, mahogany hue. Like his mother's, it was tied back, only a little more practically, with only one black bind pulling it into a ponytail. His eyes were a bluish-grey, and were somehow older than he was. They seemed almost drained of colour, as if the world in which he lived had been cruel to him, and the things he had seen had drawn the blue from his irises. He looked to be on the brink of adulthood, was probably tall for his age and didn't smile much.

"Javert," said the gyptian woman, smiling whilst gazing in a sort of childish amusement at the cards on the table before her. She looked up. "You had something to tell me."

Javert nodded. "Yes, mother, I –"

She laughed. "Oh, you don't have to call me _mother_… something shorter. I'll settle for mama."

"For goodness sake, mother! Are you trying to keep me a child forever?" He stood suddenly at his full height. "I'm practically a full-grown _man_! Why should I address you like I'm a _child_?"

"Calm down, Javert, darling." The gyptian woman was used to her son's erratic moods – he was a teenager, after all, if only a couple of years off twenty. Teenagers had every right to be moody. Something, however, had often nagged at her about Javert's moods; they were just… odd, in a way, different to the spur-of-the-moment rages of others his age. They were too mature to be the result of mere hormones. There was something about them that suggested a deeper motive, as if Javert had pent up his emotions until he could control them no longer.

Javert sighed and sat down again, composed once more. "You're right. I'm sorry."

_He's too mature for his age. I wish he'd just be a child for once._

"Don't you fret, dear," she said, reaching out across the small wooden table to collect her tarot cards into a neat pile. "What was it you were going to tell me?"

"Well… it was just that – oh, mother, not this palmistry thing again!" Whilst he'd been speaking, Javert's mother had taken his hand and was now studying his palm intently. "It's absolutely ridiculous!"

"Now, now, Javert. Let your mama have her fun."

Javert would have rolled his eyes, but he knew better. His mother was an adamant believer in respect toward one's elders. All the same, he was trying to tell her something. Something _serious_. Couldn't her palmistry wait? "Mother…"

She smiled at him without taking her eyes of his palm, one index finger tracing across the gentle indentations running across his hand. Javert submitted meekly to the violation. It wasn't worth fighting about.

"Oh, Javert, your fingers slant outward very slightly and the pad of your thumb faces up when your hand's relaxed! That means you have an artistic streak in you somewhere."

_Damn this Romani nonsense,_ thought Javert, smiling tolerantly at her.

"Ah… you have a hidden talent! You see that line there?" She pointed. "There's a triangle forming off it. It means you have a talent that you can put to use in your life."

_Yes mother. Who sold you _this_ tripe?_

"Marriage line's short, my boy." The woman smiled, stifling a laugh. "Poor you. You're not going to have much luck in love. And your life line…"

Javert couldn't suppress an inward sigh. Did she honestly believe this? She didn't seem to notice this, though, because she seemed fixated on the line that lay on a slight diagonal from one side of his palm to the other, starting a little less than an inch beneath the base of his index finger. He knew what was coming next.

"This is short, too. That means you're going to die before your time." She looked up at him, concern in her eyes. A dry laugh escaped his lips.

"Mother, you do realise that every time you've 'foretold' my future you've said I'm going to die early."

"It must be true then," retorted the gypsy indignantly.

"I hate to have to tell you this, mother, but I really don't believe in this sort of magic," said Javert, boredom apparent on his face – his face too pale to be fully gyptian, too dark to be pure Frenchman. His mother's face, on the other hand, bore an expression of mild shock.

"You _don't_?" It was hard to believe. The gypsies were strongly fixated with divination magic, rituals and talismans – or at least this one was.

"No, mother, I don't."

His mother smiled to herself. Boys and their moods. It was just a passing phase. Yet when she smiled to Javert, her expression suddenly became weak. A sad look came into her eyes. "You're so much like your father sometimes."

The aura of the room was like black ice at that moment. The mood of the other could not be predicted on their face alone. Neither could be sure what the other was thinking – which memories came to mind at this careless mention.

"How can I ever know what you mean," said Javert, slowly and unsurely, eyes dropped, "when you speak of a man who I only see twice or thrice a year, generally drunk and only for a night?"

The woman sighed. "I'm sorry, Javert, I… shouldn't have bought him up."

She crossed her legs nervously, the long, multicoloured skirt that she wore shifting in waves. She carefully adjusted it so her legs did not show, slim fingers grabbing lightly at the fabric, watching as it bunched in her grasp. Javert's father was a touchy subject, true. To be entirely honest, she'd barely known the man when she'd gotten pregnant. Such premarital acts were strictly forbidden in her culture, but there had been nothing she could do as she'd been arrested a few months later after unwittingly assisting her child's father in robbery. Javert had been born in prison – the guilty secret known only to herself, Javert's father and Javert himself, who had chosen to keep strictly silent on the matter. It was embarrassing, really, and he knew it.

As for the Romani taboos, how were her lover to have known? Javert had been born, and after that, she'd been happy. She'd received heavy reprimand upon returning to her people with a baby, but she'd decided to let words be words there. Almost no regrets had plagued her after that – well, one.

Her temporary man had deserted, leaving behind nothing but a cheap handkerchief. Absent-mindedly, she'd picked it up, forgetting that, as a new mother, everything she touched would be destroyed weeks later – such was the tradition.

"It… doesn't matter," Javert said quietly, breaking the silence that had entertained the room for a while.

"Darling, have I –"

"No, no, it's quite alright. I'm fine," he replied quickly. A little too quickly – one could tell something had snapped in him. He shook his head, blue-grey eyes averted. Not the fluid, deep brown eyes of his mother – his father's eyes – though at times, they held the same odd, knowing look as his gypsy parent. He looked up at her. "I just wanted to tell you that I'm leaving tomorrow."

"_What_?"

This came as a shock to the woman. Javert averted his eyes again, guiltily. "Mother, I–"

"_Leaving_? And you never told me?" she stepped up, striding over to his chair, shoes clicking on the wooden floor.

"Mother –"

"Javert, how could you do this?"

"Mother, please let me –"

"Your father runs off as soon as responsibility shows up on the horizon and now you're leaving as well!"

"Mother!" Javert stood up, placing a hand on her arm. He spoke softly with urgency creeping into his voice as if through small gaps, hinting that he would have liked to have spoken with more. "Please."

She crumbled, and her voice, too, softened. "Why?"

"Because..." Javert paused. He still wasn't looking at her. He couldn't. "I don't... I don't like living here. I feel so out of place and the others - the people my age, I mean -"

"Why should you care what they think?"

"Have you heard what they call me?" Javert stepped back, turning away. "Mother, do you honestly want your son to stay in a place where hurled rocks are what people use to greet him and he's referred to as 'whorespawn' and 'half-gyptian bastard '?"

"Javert, I -"

"Don't try to make me stay here!" he cried in desperation, turning back around to face her. "I can't live like this any more! I don't want to live with a mother who's 'fraud fortune teller by day, prostitute by night'! I'm sick of it! I'm sick of all of this!"

The gyptian woman was practically in tears. "Javert, I'm sorry."

"Sorry that what?" Rage was fully apparent in his voice now – the rage of being mistreated, being misunderstood… the rage which he had longed to show; _needed_ to show; which was escaping him all at once after being pent up for so long. "That you can't make a sou without committing fraud or selling your body?"

He wasn't angry with her. She knew that. He was angry with everyone – with the world, the world that had discriminated him, rejected him because of what he was: a half-breed, an accident, an abomination. Angry because he would never be accepted. He was doomed to live outside society forever, and he knew that. And why?

"Mother, I'm like this because of you!"

She started.

"I'm like this because you and my father… you let me exist! You _knew_ that nothing good would come of it! You _knew_ what would happen to me! Why did you do that to me? Why didn't you just throw me in the Seine as soon as I was born to save me having to live like this?"

She shook her head mutely, opening her mouth again and again in hopes that she could find words. Nothing came. Then all of a sudden, Javert's anger vanished, as abruptly as it had appeared. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"I'm sorry, mother. This is how it has to be." He moved over to the door of the caravan. "I'll be gone tomorrow morning – to Toulon. I'll find a job there, something… anything that doesn't involve this ... nightmare."

"Javert, please don't…" She wanted to run over, to hold him and beg him not to leave, but she couldn't do anything.

Her son reached to his neck, where a protection talisman hung from a string. He pulled down on it, snapping the fragile loop. "You can have this back."

He tossed the talisman to the floor in a brief movement, but in the haste of the action there seemed a sort of reluctance to throw it away.

"I don't need it."

With that, he turned his back on her and stepped out the door, never to return again.

**I _don't_ like that ending, but oh well, it's near to three AM. Give me some credit. XD**


End file.
